LA Film Forum Logo

Larry Gottheim: Chants and Dances

Larry Gottheim: Chants and Dances

Knot/Not. by Larry Gottheim

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Larry Gottheim: Chants and Dances

Friday, February 7, 2020, 8:00 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles CA 90026

LA premieres!

Renowned filmmaker Larry Gottheim returns to Los Angeles Filmforum with a couple of classic films and the LA premieres of two new digital works.

Note the change in date & time & location.

Larry Gottheim taught film-making and cinema aesthetics at Binghamton University until 1998. This was a program he started in the late 1960’s, the first regular undergraduate program dealing with film as a personal art. His early silent films such as FOG LINE, DOORWAY, BARN RUSHES are widely known. In the 1970’s he made ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, a set of 4 long films that explore complex relationships between sound and image. While still formal and concerned with sound and image, some later films include material that would ordinarily be seen in a documentary mode (MACHETE GILETTE.... MAMA.) His many years’ involvement with Vodou in Haiti led to a video work CHANTS AND DANCES FOR HAND. His most recent film KNOT/NOT is a complex web of material tied together by repetition and superimposition. His works have been included in numerous museums, festivals and other venues throughout the world.

https://www.larrygottheimfilms.com/

Special Thanks to Amy Halpern.

Tickets: $12 general; $8 students (with ID)/seniors; free for Filmforum Members.

available through Brown Paper Tickets at https://gottheim2.bpt.me or at the door. 

 For more information: www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238.

Corn Still 3 smaller

Corn

Corn

1970, digital version 2019, color, 11 min.

An offering. A transformation of states from plant to food, from steam to the grain of the film.

HARMONICA smaller

Harmonica

1971, digital version 2019, color, sound,  10 ½ min.

The car is a moving image-instrument, orchestrated by the harmonica player, the driver of the car, the wind. He is an avatar of me, the artist—the first of them in my films, as it is the first to superimpose sound on image.

kNOTNOTWALL

Knot/Not.

Knot/Not.

2019, digital, color, 22 min.

LA Premiere!

Images of graffiti on a wall near my house, the negative of the open horizons of my early films, are linked to material about the German conductor Wilhelm Furchtwängler, music, timing and the Nazis. All is bound by a musical work that involves the multiplication table in four languages. It uses superimposition and repetition not just as cinematic devices, but to open the deeper meaning hidden within them. Hidden and revealed.

Chants3 smaller

Chants and Dances for Hand

Chants and Dances for Hand

1991-2017, digital, color, sound, 40 min.

LA premiere!

Material gathered in several years’ participation with Vodou in Haiti. This video work combines sync sound fragments from ceremonies, an uprising, movies, to create a complex fast-moving structured flow of material. It moves far away from traditional documentary, suggesting links to motifs and themes of earlier films and even getting into the relationship between ceremony, electrons and death. Spectatorship in ceremony and cinema.